How are you all? Another week has come and gone. One more week left in the transfer!! I hope I stay here in Costa. We still have a lot of work to do here with a lot of potential. The chance of me getting transferred is pretty small though. Hopefully my comp Hilton stays too so we can spend Christmas on the beach! That would be fun.
This week we found a couple of news to teach and a couple more potentials. We met up with Luis and Neuza at the beginning of the week and we get there and they are straight up arguing yelling at each other. So we had to calm them down and finally taught them a lesson. So that day was rough. But we taught them again yesterday and they were much better. They said they feel like they should be baptized but still havent received an answer. So when they do we will marry them and baptize them right after. I pray for them day and night. Hopefully they are going to keep their commitments!
Earlier this week we went out on the beach when we first left the house just to see the beach and take a few pics and as soon as we started walking we hear, " Hey Elders!" It ends up being a member from Germany that is a pilot and stayed the week here in Portugal. He started asking about the mission and our investigators and I was like just a question, what is your calling? He says stake president and I was like i knew it! Haha that guy was awesome!! He sounded just like uchdorf. And he really emphasized,"Remeber who you are, you are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will always help you." This really hit home to me and i was feeling the spirit super strong through him. Its so crazy how the Lord puts people in your path to help you and motivate you. The guys name was Mark Hart.
It was super sad hearing about the tradigy in Paris. I dont really know how I ended up hearing about it but somehow i did from investigators or something. But my heart goes out to those people. We were sitting at Luis and Neuzas house and they were talking about it on the news and showing what happened. It was scary!
Nothing is happening here in Portugal as in safety measures. Everything is still the same. But now with this whole situation, people always ask us," If God loves all his children, Why does he let these things happen?" And we simply answer: God loves us so much. He loves us enough to give us our own agency, or the freedom to choose between right or wrong. Whatever people do is based on their own agency. Satan is real, and he knows God´s plan. He knows he can tempt us and influence us and this is what he does all day long every single day. And this is why evil things happen in this world, because God´s plan is centered around agency and he will never take that away from us. There will always be those good people who use their agency to do good things and follow God´s plan, and there will always be evil people who have fallen to the temptations of the enemy. Therefore, just because bad things happen, it doesnt mean God doesnt love us.
Today for pday we went across the river to "Torre de Belém" which is a famous statue in the river. It was pretty cool! But the main reason why we went there is to meet up with a bunchhhhh of elders to play a game of tackle football! A bunch of people are dying this transfer (Term for finishing their missions) so they wanted to play a game of tackle football together. So we did. It starts just like your typical turkey bowl football game with about 20 people on each team. We went and grabbed some food while they started playing and came back and played. They wanted me to play quarterback because they saw me throw the football and they couldnt really i guess. So here we go, playing full out tackel football with no pads or anything. It was awesome!! I got rocked a couple of times haha because we were playing with a bunch of beasts. I feel kinda sore now but we will see tomorrow.
Anyways. Thats about it for my week. Still working hard! Slowly but surely seeing success!
But always trusting in the Lord.
I love and miss all of you. Nobody needs to worry about me because I am doing just fine. Im exactly where the Lord needs me, and he will always help me. Ill be home in no time.
Always remember who you are. A child of God, Our Heavenly Father. He wants you to succeed. He wants you to be happy. We need to always remember what is truly important in this life- striving to be better every day by keeping the commandments and loving/ serving one another. Bad things will always happen to good people, I can promise you that, because it always seems to happen to me. But these bad things will make you better. They will strengthen you for even greater things. The most important thing you need to do is trust in your Heavenly Father. He will always be there for you, I promise. As a representative of Jesus Christ, I testify that he lives and loves you. I know that. or else I wouldn´t be out here to share this with the people of Portugal.
Alma 26:12
que tenham uma boa semana!
Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen
Missão Portugal Lisboa
Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C
1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa
Portugal
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